If he hadn't learned how to manage people by taking a university course, builder Martin Potts says he'd be "in the ground".
Making the jump from "tradie" to management is not easy, especially when the managing is taking place amid the pressure and long hours of the Christchurch re-build.
Previously a self-employed builder in Christchurch, Potts knew he needed help when he moved into a management position with Buildtech Holdings, one of the many firms engaged in the re-build. The University of Auckland Business School's short-term Executive Education courses were his ticket, he says, to a more manageable life.
"I'd had my own business for some time; I was a tradie leading up to the earthquake and worked doing some repairs for the first six months or so.
"I started with the company about a year into the re-build and swiftly discovered the hands-on approach I had taken when working for myself wasn't the right thing for my new job as a project director.
"Previously, I had been totally over everything; I guess you could say the biggest thing for me was that I preferred to get in there and show people how to do the job - rather than trust them to get it done by making their own decisions."
The problem with trying to be across everything is that something has to give. What "gave", in Potts' case, was his home life.
"I started working pretty long hours; I was working every weekend and really feeling it. Finally, I knew I just couldn't keep up the pace or it was going to have me in the ground."
He chose the Business School's two-day course, 'Managing People' last year, emerging a different man.
"Straight after taking the course, I stopped working weekends," he says. "I think I have worked only three since then - it's made a huge difference to my life with my family."
He learned to trust people, to recognise that some had skills to get the job done, learned what motivated them and how to get the best out of them - and how to recognise someone doing a good job by other means than just observing the hours and the physical labour they put in.
"It was a hell of a big change," he says. "It was not about working harder but working smarter. I have been to a couple of similar courses in Christchurch but they paled in comparison to the quality of information I was given at the University of Auckland."
Potts says he now recognises how badly he needed the course. The re-build is a pressure-filled environment also full of hard work and he says staff in many companies find the going tough.
"There is a high turnover down here in Christchurch; a lot of attrition. There is a lot of pressure and a lot of directions that pressure comes from - the bosses, other construction companies and contractors, insurance companies, loss adjusters and homeowners, especially homeowners.
"It doesn't take much of that to make a builder wonder, after about 18 months, why they are doing this and whether they could be doing something less stressful. However, from my point of view, even if there is attrition still, it is not because they are not being managed properly but from the sheer pressure and nature of a job like the re-build."
Potts now has another University of Auckland course lined up - Negotiation Skills - and sees this as the next step in his career path.